


Going Out on a Limb

by alternatedoom



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Kink Meme, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-20
Updated: 2009-11-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 20:28:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12441099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternatedoom/pseuds/alternatedoom
Summary: Daken, still a bit adrift, is not too old for new experiences.





	Going Out on a Limb

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Marvel Kink Meme [here](https://marvel-kink.livejournal.com/1724.html?thread=965820). Prompt was: _I want some Daken/Victor based on this fanfic. Anything, pheromones or not, but I think non/dub-con doesn't fit._
> 
> A/N: I cannot make Daken as fucking awesome as the anon who wrote _Teaching to Learn_. I was a bit unsure about attempting this as I think _Teaching_ 's one of the loveliest character pieces I've ever had the pleasure of reading. But I tried, cause I agree ~~as with most good things~~ there should be porn of it.

Victor leans forward and presses lips to his, hesitantly. Daken thinks about it for a second and then kisses him back. Only a moment passes before the soft kiss turns into a seeking, aggressive kiss.

Victor holds his own, giving as good as he gets, and he's not a bad kisser.

He sounds breathless when Daken finally breaks it off. "Any chance we could do that on a regular basis?"

Daken looks into warm green eyes, evaluating, because everyone always has a motive and even after all this time, when he doesn't know what they're feeling he's inclined to be suspicious. "Why?"

"Because I like you," Victor says simply.

"You don't know me," Daken points out. Victor's candid, boyish advances are disquieting, and Daken isn't sure why. With two fingers he fiddles with the chain dangling from his pocket.

"I'd like to," Victor responds, bold again, and only because he has sharp senses can Daken detect the trace of shyness Victor's concealing.

"Because you're my student?" He can't keep the knowing, slightly patronizing tone out of his voice, and he's far more comfortable referring to them as his students than he is calling himself their teacher. He's been coaching them in Japanese for four months, but that still doesn't make him a teacher.

"No," Victor says firmly. "Not that the student-teacher thing doesn't make it extra-hot," he confesses, smiling, and Daken represses a smirk. Power dynamics, yes. Not that he's about to admit that he agrees.

"You'll have to switch out of my class," he warns. Like that's some big loss.

"That's okay, I'll take a different language," Victor says easily, and Daken feels a funny pang. Like maybe there _would_ be a loss, and it would be his.

Victor is his most proficient student, next to Alani who came to the class already knowing a little Japanese. But it's true he hasn't gotten into it the way Megan and a couple of the others have. Victor masters all of the subjects he studies, but judging by an overheard conversation between Beast and Emma, he lacks real passion for most of them.

Daken's grown accustomed to seeing Victor every day. That's got to be all it is, he tells himself.

"Emma will have a fit," he says mildly.

Victor scoffs. "You know she started macking on Mr. Summers while she was his shrink, right? While he was with Mrs. Grey-Summers?"

"No. I didn't know that."

Daken wonders at himself. He knows plenty about Emma's past, but this is news to him. Time was he'd have made a point of knowing _everything_ before getting involved on a job. He's slipping, he thinks. This place is making him soft.

Regardless of her own illicit sexual liaisons, Emma will still have a fit, in her cool, quiet way.

Then again, Emma had been the one to point out to him Victor had a crush. Daken wavers.

"I'm a lot older than you," he tells Victor.

"I'm way more reptilian than you," Victor replies cheerfully. "So what?"

How can he say it. 'You wouldn't be able to understand me' he considers and immediately discards. Who here _would_ understand him, really? Who anywhere? Besides, being a known quantity is not necessarily a positive development. Emma had gotten all up in his brain, and she hasn't stopped irking him with the things she picked up since.

"So how old are you?"

"I was born in 1946," Daken tells him, then watches Victor blanch as he does the math in his head.

"For real?!"

Daken nods.

"How many people have you been with?"

Daken laughs. "Did your sex ed teacher tell you we need to have the how-many-people-have-you-been-with talk before we fuck?" he drawls.

Daken watches with slight fascination as darker green spots slowly bloom on the apples of Victor's pale green cheeks. He's never seen anyone flush quite like that.

"No," Victor says, but he's only a little bit flustered and Daken is clearly losing his edge. "I'm asking because you're _old_."

"I don't know. A couple thousand, maybe."

"Seriously?" Victor looks shocked and incredulous.

Daken stares him in the eye. "Seriously."

Daken doesn't say what he's thinking, which is that sex aside, he and Victor probably have about the same amount of experience. At least with the sort of relationships where you aren't making the other person feel what you want them to. Who knows, Victor might even have more than him.

Daken isn't about to ask after Victor's romantic and sexual history, because that would be ridiculous. He's above that. He gets the distinct impression it matters to Victor, though. Obviously the idea of being two thousand and one doesn't suit.

"Well... okay," Victor says finally.

"What?" Daken sighs inwardly. "Changed your mind?"

"No," Victor says hastily, and clarifies, "But I was hoping to do more than fuck."

After a moment Daken offers him his hand, and Victor takes it.

* * *

Up in his room, the sex is good. Victor strips confidently, but his scent gives him away, nervous and shy. Daken respects that he doesn't let on. Though he's never been exactly picky, he likes courage in his partners. Shy is boring.

He takes his clothes off more slowly, not particularly caring how sexy it is or isn't, and joins his student on the bed. Victor's body is more or less what he expected--slim and hairless and scaly-smooth, kissed by darker shades of green up the insides of his thighs and along the muscles of his stomach. He has a nice-looking cock, too.

Victor relaxes after the first few minutes. He gives Daken an amazing blowjob, although with a tongue like that Daken imagines it would be difficult to give a _bad_ blowjob. Victor seems to enjoy winding fingers in the curls of his pubic hair. They kiss a little in between position changes.

Daken smothers a smile when Victor produces a condom and puts it on him solemnly. They can go over the finer points of his healing mutation some other time, because Daken isn't interested in talking right now. He pushes Victor's legs up and tongues his asshole, brief and intense, before he puts Victor's calves on his shoulders and fucks him into the mattress.

Afterwards they lie apart on his bed and talk.

Victor is the only one of Daken's students who taunts and goads him and sometimes treats him like an equal. The others are more respectful, if giggly, and of course with respect comes distance. Daken appreciates the value of distance, but he likes Victor's easy familiarity for reasons he can't put his finger on.

At times he's almost reminded of the way he used to banter with Lester, although a great deal more menace lurked underneath that back-and-forth. If interacting with Lester was like swimming with a shark in tropical waters, interacting with Victor's like stroking a baby lizard in the palm of his hand, cool to the touch, all sensuality and no real bite. Victor's teasing is all nuance and sexual tension. With Lester he'd shared a lot of genuine hatred and loaded desire-to-kill-you tension.

Daken doesn't know what he wants out of this, but he's surprised to admit to himself that it's comfortable, and that's despite not being sure what Victor's thinking and feeling.

Before he departs for his own room, Victor writes his cell phone number on a piece of paper and leaves it on the nightstand.

* * *

He has no class to teach the next day, and he's fresh out of reading material, so he decides to take a trip to the bookstore.

As he's leaving, his father-- _Logan_ , goddamnit, _Logan_ \--is standing in the foyer. Daken stiffens imperceptibly. Interactions with Logan are strained and uncomfortable at best, but the man keeps reaching out to him. Daken will give him this: he's damned persistent. Every week since he's been here, Logan's asked if he wants to go for a beer.

Daken always says no.

The last couple times, though, he's hesitated a moment before refusing.

"Hi," Logan says as he approaches.

"Hi." He stops and waits for whatever Logan's going to come out with. There's no point avoiding it, Logan will say whatever it is he's turned up to say, and Daken senses it's more than the drinking proposition today.

"You and Victor, huh?"

He scowls, because he hadn't thought to suppress his scent.

"It's none of your business," he snaps. But when Logan puts a hirsute, tentative hand on his shoulder, he doesn't shake it off or pull away.

"I think it's great, Daken," Logan says, softly.

He can tell how much Logan loves him whenever he unnecessarily says his name. You'd have to be deaf, blind, four years old, and lack their sense of smell not to realize how badly his father wants to spend time with him.

Daken crosses his arms. "You don't think he's a little young for me?"

"I think he's a good kid," Logan replies steadily. The corners of his mouth turn up, wryly. "'Sides, nobody wants to see you date someone your own age."

Daken's about to retort something about fucking sexagenarians, but then he just rolls his eyes. Because he still lets Logan get to him, and it's stupid.

Logan drops his hand, letting his arm fall gently to his side. "I'm going for a beer. Wanna come?"

One of these days he's going to give in, Daken knows. "No, thank you."

Logan nods. It's the response he's used to.

"Maybe next week," he hears himself say, and if he doesn't know where it came from, he at least has the satisfaction of the brief look of surprise that crosses Logan's face.

Ugh, he's committed himself.

But he'll have a week to psych himself up for it. And he can always change his mind.

"See you," Daken says, and leaves quickly.

* * *

Emma confronts him after that, though she seems more amused than anything else and it irritates him. He's sleeping with his goddamn student, and she's entertained. No morals, he thinks, but the prickle of irony isn't lost on him.

Daken puts on his standard studied blandness like a veil.

Emma gives him a pointed look. "Victor spoke to me about switching language class to French with me."

"Should I pretend I'm surprised?"

"So this was your idea?" Emma looks at him closely.

"We may have discussed it," he answers, and with deliberate insousciance he slides his eyes down to her breasts. He isn't sure why he's bothering being guarded. Emma likely wrung every bit of their afternoon fling out of Victor's head. Unlike him, Victor thinks in English, and the visual language of mental pictures is universal, anyway.

"When I told you he liked you, I didn't think you were going to act on it."

When he says nothing, she continues, "You didn't think to run the class change by me or Scott _before_ you got involved with him?"

That he can answer. "There wasn't time. Are we done here?"

Emma sighs, but she smiles that little smile at him, and her expression contains no real reproach.

* * *

It's mid-April and the weather is cloudless and mild with a gentle breeze. The day's too beautiful to stay inside, so he takes his class outdoors.

He'd wondered if Victor would tell any of his classmates why he was switching to French, particularly Jonas. Those two are obviously close. Or the others might have heard it from Santo, if Victor told him, although Santo's not in Daken's class. But no one comments on Victor's absence. They're all happy to be outside.

Their vocabulary's growing by the day. He has a funny stirring sort of feeling when he looks at his students. If he flew them to Japan and abandoned them on the streets of Tokyo, they could speak enough to get by. Granted their accents are largely terrible, but they've learned, are learning more all the time.

They're growing formidable outside the classroom, too. In battle. He knows because he's fought alongside them, and at Scott's request, he subbed for Logan's Combat class one day. The baby chicks aren't completely hapless anymore.

After he dismisses his students, he stays outside, going to sit on a patch of grass in the drifting afternoon sun. He scents Victor's approach on the wind a minute before the boy greets him in Japanese.

When Victor joins him on the grass, Daken kisses him hello, unzips long baggy shorts and sucks him off right there. Victor seems startled but pleased and very turned-on.

If anyone sees them, no one complains to Daken.

* * *

Sunday finds Daken sitting in his room, gently rubbing the chipped polish off his nails with a cotton ball. The lacquer comes off in black smears as the scent of acetone fills the room. He opens a window before beginning to apply a fresh coat, and holds his fingertips under the hairdryer for a few minutes to speed the drying process.

He texts Victor, because he doesn't fancy the idea of going downstairs and knocking on the door of the room his teenaged lover shares with his roommate. Leaving his cell phone number was smart. Daken appreciates that sort of forethought.

_Going out. Do you want to come?_

He gets a pinging response almost immediately. _yes where r we going?_

Daken has a feeling his own adherence to proper grammar in texting is the only reason Victor uses punctuation at all. _To a festival. Meet me downstairs in an hour._

_sure_

Victor's waiting for him in the living room when he comes down the stairs.

"So what's this festival?" Victor asks, standing up.

"The annual Cherry Blossom Festival. In Japantown."

* * *

He remembers the looks they got from passersby when he took his class to see _Tokyo Zankoku Keistatsu_ that day. Well, at least he'll only be walking around with one obvious mutant this time, and Victor walks beside him, matching his footsteps rather than following at his heels.

He looks up at the sky. The weather's ideal for this.

Victor gazes at him curiously. "Do you go to fairs a lot?"

Daken doesn't remind him that it's a festival, not a fair, and there's a subtle but distinct difference. "Not really."

"What made you want to today?"

"Culture, I guess." He looks up and down the street with the rows of tents and tables of food, and the air is light with intriguing and mouth-watering smells. "Curiosity. I've never been."

The parade starts. The festival is full of color, of pretty young women in traditional Japanese dress, and vendors hawking all manner of wares of varying levels of uselessness. Bouquets of red carnations line the parade floats, and pale pink petals flutter around them in freefall. Daken catches a bit of the confetti and rubs it between thumb and forefinger. The thin paper is soft, white with pale whorls of pink to simulate sakura petals. It's beautiful.

In the crush of people, they're gawked at less than Daken expected. All attention is on the parade floats.

"This is pretty cool," Victor says with enthusiasm.

"Hey, I meant to tell you. Emma talked to me about you. Or, about us really."

Daken turns to him but carefully keeps his voice neutral. "What did she say?"

"A lot of things. She said I'm an adult and can make my own decisions. And that she doesn't think you're taking advantage of me, because we have about equal levels of maturity."

"That bitch," Daken says aloud, but honestly, it's hilarious. He kisses his jailbait reptile ex-student boyfriend while the floats go by, girls in kimonos smiling and tossing handfuls of silken paper petals high into the air.


End file.
